Cream cheese and plastic

For reasons I can't even begin to explain, while we were in the car, Jane took her bagel, opened it up, smeared the cream cheese on her baby's head, and then licked the baby.

Creepy, no?

What I learned on the New Jersey Turnpike

Traveling with small children is always interesting. Especially if you hit traffic. When we left on Wednesday morning for the Thanksgiving weekend, we managed to avoid any serious delays, but because we were traveling in the daytime, it was pretty unlikely that either Samson or Jane would sleep in the car.

There's just way too much to look at. From the never-ending convoy of big rigs and Greyhound buses to the seemingly limitless supply of construction vehicles and workers (seriously, will they ever be finished repairing the roads in Westchester?), the odds were definitely against us. Which afforded a lot of time to listen to Samson and Jane as they were shuttled along the I-95 corridor. Along the way, I learned a few things:

1. Jane really likes the Crazy 88's theme music. A lot. Of course, she doesn't know the song is called "Battle without honor or humanity," and she sure as heck hasn't seen "Kill Bill Vol. 1." In fact, she calls it "shh-tuh wot won" because of the way the cymbals crescendo and to let me know it's "that one," I guess. In any event, any time she saw the iPod, she made her request.

2. If Toyota ever teams up with McDonald's circa 1985 to create a McDLT car, we will be first on the waiting list. Samson is apparently always cold. And Jane only needs to see Vicki putting on the heat for them in the back to be hot. Seriously, if Vicki's hand even went even near the dial, Jane would pipe up "hot; too hot!"

3. Vicki and I are under surveillance. Whether it's Jane looking at Samson, as he tries to grab a toy from her, saying "Don't. You. Dare." or the way that Sam sprinkles his sentences with the word "apparently," very little we say goes unnoticed. I knew this, but being in a car for an extended period of time sort of concentrates the experience.

4. I am glad Samson can't read. Despite the fact that we are proud of him for being potty trained, having to take him to use the restroom on the NJTPK is not one of my favorite things to do. So I'm especially glad he's too young yet to have taken notice of the commentary scrawled all over the stall, including references to Frank's predilection for long-haul truckers, Cheryl's lack of moral fiber, and a general lack of enthusiasm for the Eagles (not sure if the writer meant the band or the team; either way, he was kind of right).

5. When they are awake, Samson and Jane are awfully cute [I'm biased, of course]. But when they're sleeping, my kids look like angels, and I want nothing more in the world than to get off the highway and get home where they can be safe and warm in their beds.

Thanksgiving, brought to you by Agatha Christie

This was a strange Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, it was a good one. My brother-in-law, Greg, is a terrific cook, and spending time with my sister and godson was terrific.

But I got a call on Tuesday from my folks letting me know that my Dad was sick and would not make it to Connecticut for the festivities. So two down for the grown-up table.

On Thanksgiving Day, Greg's brother (my brother-in-law-in-law?) called to let us know one of his boys was down with a fever and so his wife would be staying home and he'd have the other two kids. Minus one more at the adult table, and one less seat at the kids' end.

Regardless, there was plenty of food (really, those three extra adults might have gone hungry with the way we five survivors put away the turkey etc), and we had a great time being the oldest grown-ups at the table. Since Greg's folks were in Atlanta visiting one of his other brothers (he's got 3), we really threw tradition out the window --- substituting our favorite (and most meaningful) Public Enemy lyrics for grace and playing flip-cup using slices of pumpkin pie.

OK, not really, but it did not go unnoticed among any of us that we had, albeit unintentionally, become the standard bearers for the most traditional of holiday meals. And as we looked down the table at those shining faces watching us, there was a sense that we were, without even trying, creating the beginnings of the stuff of their childhood memories.

We were also threatening them with no dessert if they didn't sit down and eat [except Jane, of course; that girl needs no cajoling]. But I think you know what I mean...

Lag time

Holy cow, I've been busy at work. Like busy enough that I bring work home and, after putting Samson and Jane to bed, get back on the computer. I know: Poor me.

In lieu of an actual post, I thought I'd try something more challenging. An update on Samson and Jane using the spare and haunting poetry that is haiku. So here goes.

Jane

All right now Janie
You want to try the potty?
Oh. I'll get a towel.

[OK, I was one syllable over on that one]

Samson

Samson, where are you?
How did you get under there?
Wait, don't move. VICKI!!!!

A portrait of the young man as an artist

This is the best I could do with the camera in my phone. Samson drew this for me yesterday morning and handed it to me on my way out the door. I was running late (what else is new) and so just grabbed it and headed for the office.

When I spoke with him later, I realized I hadn't asked him what it was a picture of. So I asked. The answer: "Francis Scott Key in jail." I wish I was making this up.

Not sure if they're covering the Star Spangled Banner in school or if they've got a field trip planned for Fort McHenry. Heck, I don't even know if FSK was ever imprisoned. But there it is, on the bulletin board in my office. Francis Scott Key. In jail.

Thanks Dad

My father is 82 years old. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 after his family received a telegram that his oldest brother, a private in the Army, had gone missing in Guadalcanal.


My grandfather had to sign the papers for him, since he was underage, and was so upset at his youngest son's willfulness that he didn't speak to him for weeks afterward. With one son missing and another hell-bent on heading off into something he couldn't possibly have imagined the scale of, it's not hard to see my grandfather's side of this. [Many of the things I never understood about my father, or my grandfather for that matter, have become much clearer in the past four years.]

Even so, he was proud of my Dad, who served from 1943 until 1946, the final years of his teenage-hood, with the Pacific fleet off the coast of Japan and in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.

The experience was not one he spoke about much when I was younger. He had been on a small ship and had, I understood, seen some things he wished he hadn't. But he took it all as a matter of course and made it home safe and sound and returned to civilian life. He married late, and had kids even later, and is now the proud grandfather of three.

Still, growing up I got the distinct sense that he was somewhat amused by the trials and tribulations of my teenage years and those of my sister. I guess it's hard to take a fight about junior-year curfew all that seriously when at 17 you were on the other side of the world eating C-rations and getting ready for air-raids (not drills but the real thing).

There are not a lot of the old guard left to visit the finally completed memorial in Washington, DC, but I am hopeful that when the weather gets warmer, I can finally get my Dad down this way and that we can visit it together.

I am sure it will make him emotional, which is OK (even though it's hard to watch). And he'll probably get annoyed (as I did) at the tourists lining up in front of their state's name with big cheese-eating grins [as if a monument to the dead was like Disneyworld minus the rides].

But I want him to see it, and for my kids to be there with him --- a reminder of what he was fighting for, even if, at 17, he wasn't sure. Pace Tom Brokaw, but the greatest generation were not high-minded individuals with sophisticated geopolitical understanding and a burning desire to combat fascism. They were not people who set out to be heroes or who were self-consciously appointing themselves to save the world.

They were ordinary guys like my Dad who believed the United States of America, and all the people in it, were worth fighting for.

They were right. They still are.

Happy Veterans Day. And thanks, Dad.

Sweet (and semi-sweet) Jane

Vicki has this recipe for chocolate chip cookies that she got years ago from a former colleague who had some kind of black belt in pastry abilities. It was apparently a measure of this woman's esteem that she even gave Vicki the recipe, and so whenever we make these cookies it feels like we're carrying on some kind of important culinary tradition.

Mostly, though, they're just ridiculously good. And Jane got her first taste of them today.

Our girl is usually not much for chocolate, but clearly she's willing to make an exception.

And yes, that's a pen-and-ink cat face drawn on her forearm. Samson went to a birthday party yesterday, and the kids all got temporary tattoos in their goodie bags. Despite the fact that I cadged an extra one so we could bring it home to Jane, she demanded one for each arm.

Hence the Hello Kitty goes to Riker's look on our 22-month-old.

Yard work

We only have one tree in our yard that loses leaves in the fall. Of course, the neighbors on either side of us have several such trees, so every fall we fill at least 15 or 20 bags of leaves. Samson is just starting to really get the whole jumping in leaves thing, and with the weather so nice lately, he's all about "helping" me with the yard work.

Good times.

What I will tell my children

Our little family waited in line for 45 minutes on Election Day morning to vote. The line snaked out the door of the elementary school that serves as our polling place and wound down the sidewalk and into the parking lot.

Forty-five minutes in line with two toddlers is usually something you'd only put up with at Disney World, but there was no way I was missing my chance to vote.

Growing up, my Dad always took me into the booth with him, and I remember when he'd pull the lever and close the curtain that it felt like I was being let in on some kind of grown-up secret. Never mind that I had little concept of what he was actually doing, I knew it was "something important."

And so it was with some degree of pride and nostalgia that I stood at the little table (no curtains for us, just tall cardboard blinders) with Samson in my arms to cast my vote. We had ample time to discuss what was going to happen as we waited, and I did my best to inform him of what voting entails. When we got inside, he was ready and suggested, since I told him my job was to pick one of two names, that I pick the one named Samson.

Alas, I could not. But I was excited to vote in a way I had not ever been before. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was voting for someone and not as a hedge against the other guy.

I'll be honest, I'm kind of an apostate Democrat, sort of a liberal Libertarian if that makes any sense. Was never a Clinton fan [see pot smoking, dissembling; see also genocide, Rwanda; see also Defense of Marriage Act], and I couldn't suspend disbelief long enough to buy the cowboy act from a guy who went from boarding school to the Ivy League. Even so, I don't remember ever feeling joy at either man's failures. After all, their failures quickly became ours.

And while I would love it if this country had a viable third party, at this point I'd settle for two that actually functioned properly.

In my lifetime it feels like politics has become a reductive extenstion of sports. Basically, the called third strike is only outrageous when it's your guy at the plate. Which is not only intellectually disingenuous, but it makes talking to any true partisan (left or right) both futile and vaguely embarassing.

Look, I'm not a particularly starry-eyed individual. If I could get my own personal theme song, it would be Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." And I certainly know better than to expect that on January 20, 2009 the country will magically change to a nation free of troubles and absent of divisions. But I am hopeful that in a nation and a world facing a distinct crisis of leadership, we have elected someone who can rally the better angels in our nature and help deliver on the promise of what America is supposed to be about.

What I will tell my children is that on Election Day 2008, their mother and I took them with us to the polling station at eight in the morning. That there, with them in our arms, we voted for Barack Obama --- not with an eye toward "making history" or in order that we might congratulate ourselves on our "progressiveness," but with an eye toward their future and toward the kind of country we want them to grow up in.

I expect this last part holds true for those friends of mine who voted for McCain as well. I am hopeful that with a campaign that was both nasty and brutish (but sadly not short) behind us, we can get past bumper sticker philosophy (from the left and the right; seriously, Bush is not Hitler; and even if you didn't vote for him, Obama is your president) and do something. We seem to be awash in slogans. Solutions? Not so much.

With this, I will get off my soap box. I've got laundry to do.

In the immortal words of David Lee Roth...

Vicki had a craft show today, so Samson, Jane, and I had the whole day together. It was a nice, crisp fall day, and after Jane took a marathon nap [that hour time change really took it out of her], we headed out to the park.

For reasons I'm still not clear on, Samson decided that instead of going down the slide the usual way, he'd play paratrooper from the top and simply jump. I was half-turned away from him as Jane came down the slide, and the next thing I knew there was a loud thump and a blood-curdling scream. Actually, I guess it was more like a blood-gurgling scream.

Young Samson has the terrible but aw-shucks-cute habit of sticking his tongue out slightly while he does things (running, writing, playing). According to my parents, I did this too. I'd love to know how something like this is inherited.

Anyway, this little habit literally came back to bite him today. Sam landed on the ground, and, as best as I could tell, his knee struck his chin and his teeth punctured his tongue. Cue the screaming and spitting of blood.

It just so happened that only a moment before, a kind grandmotherly looking lady had sat down on a bench near us and gave me this big beatific smile as if to say "look at that nice dad playing with his kids; they sure look like a nice family."

By the time Samson had finished rinsing the blood out of his mouth, and Jane had ended her temper tantrum (brought on by my refusal to let her go up on the slide by herself while I tended to her brother), that lady was long gone.

I like to think she ran, but she did look pretty old. She probably just walked briskly.

Sam is fine, by the way, but he'll have to be careful while he's eating for the next few days.